Cold atomic gases have provided us with a great number of opportunities for studying various physical systems under controlled conditions that are seldom offered in other fields. We are thus at the point where one can truly do quantum simulation of models that are relevant for instance in condensed-matter or high-energy physics, i.e. we are on the verge of a ’cool’ quantum simulator as envisioned by Feynman. One of the avenues under exploration is the physics of one-dimensional systems. Until recently this was mostly in the many-body limit but now experiments can be performed with controllable particle numbers all the way down to the few-body regime. After a brief introduction to some of the relevant experiments, I will review recent theoretical work on one-dimensional quantum systems containing bosons, fermions, or mixtures of the two, with a particular emphasis on the case where the particles are held by an external trap.
Cold atomic gases have provided us with a great number of opportunities for studying various physical systems under controlled conditions that are seldom offered in other fields. We are thus at the point where one can truly do quantum simulation of models that are relevant for instance in condensed-matter or high-energy physics, i.e. we are on the verge of a ’cool’ quantum simulator as envisioned by Feynman. One of the avenues under exploration is the physics of one-dimensional systems. Until recently this was mostly in the many-body limit but now experiments can be performed with controllable particle numbers all the way down to the few-body regime. After a brief introduction to some of the relevant experiments, I will review recent theoretical work on one-dimensional quantum systems containing bosons, fermions, or mixtures of the two, with a particular emphasis on the case where the particles are held by an external trap.
Cold atomic gases have provided us with a great number of opportunities for studying various physical systems under controlled conditions that are seldom offered in other fields. We are thus at the point where one can truly do quantum simulation of models that are relevant for instance in condensed-matter or high-energy physics, i.e. we are on the verge of a ’cool’ quantum simulator as envisioned by Feynman. One of the avenues under exploration is the physics of one-dimensional systems. Until recently this was mostly in the many-body limit but now experiments can be performed with controllable particle numbers all the way down to the few-body regime. After a brief introduction to some of the relevant experiments, I will review recent theoretical work on one-dimensional quantum systems containing bosons, fermions, or mixtures of the two, with a particular emphasis on the case where the particles are held by an external trap.
Cold atomic gases have become a paradigmatic system for exploring fundamental physics, which at the same time allows for applications in quantum technologies. The accelerating developments in the field have led to a highly advanced set of engineering techniques that, for example, can tune interactions, shape the external geometry, select among a large set of atomic species with different properties, or control the number of atoms. In particular, it is possible to operate in lower dimensions and drive atomic systems into the strongly correlated regime. In this review, we discuss recent advances in few-body cold atom systems confined in low dimensions from a theoretical viewpoint. We mainly focus on bosonic systems in one dimension and provide an introduction to the static properties before we review the state-of-the-art research into quantum dynamical processes stimulated by the presence of correlations. Besides discussing the fundamental physical phenomena arising in these systems, we also provide an overview of the calculational and numerical tools and methods that are commonly used, thus delivering a balanced and comprehensive overview of the field. We conclude by giving an outlook on possible future directions that are interesting to explore in these correlated systems.
Recent theoretical and experimental progress on studying one-dimensional systems of bosonic, fermionic, and Bose-Fermi mixtures of a few ultracold atoms confined in traps is reviewed in the broad context of mesoscopic quantum physics. We pay special attention to limiting cases of very strong or very weak interactions and transitions between them. For bosonic mixtures, we describe the developments in systems of three and four atoms as well as different extensions to larger numbers of particles. We also briefly review progress in the case of spinor Bose gases of a few atoms. For fermionic mixtures, we discuss a special role of spin and present a detailed discussion of the two- and three-atom cases. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different computation methods applied to systems with intermediate interactions. In the case of very strong repulsion, close to the infinite limit, we discuss approaches based on effective spin chain descriptions. We also report on recent studies on higher-spin mixtures and inter-component attractive forces. For both statistics, we pay particular attention to impurity problems and mass imbalance cases. Finally, we describe the recent advances on trapped Bose-Fermi mixtures, which allow for a theoretical combination of previous concepts, well illustrating the importance of quantum statistics and inter-particle interactions. Lastly, we report on fundamental questions related to the subject which we believe will inspire further theoretical developments and experimental verification.
This thesis reports on experimental studies exploring few and many-body physics of ultracold \nBose and Fermi gases with reduced dimensionality. These experiments illustrate the versatility \nand great amount of control over the particle number, the interaction and other degrees of \nfreedom, like the spin, that these generic quantum systems offer. In the first part of this \nthesis, we use quasi one-dimensional few-particle systems of one to ten fermionic atoms to \ninvestigate the crossover from few to many-body physics. This is achieved by measuring the \ninteraction energy between a single impurity atom in a state |down> which repulsively interacts \nwith an increasing number of majority atoms in a state |up>. We find that the system quickly \napproaches the results from the many-body theory, which describes the behavior of a single \nimpurity immersed in a Fermi sea of an infinite number of majority particles. The second \npart of this thesis presents studies of the time evolution of a bosonic F=1 spinor BEC of 87Rb \natoms. In this system, we investigate the emergence and coarsening of ferromagnetic spin \ntextures from initially unmagnetized samples. While the ferromagnetic domains grow, we \nobserve the development of a spin space anisotropy which is in agreement with the predicted \nphase-diagram. The last part of this thesis presents our first steps towards the investigation \nof phase coherence of quasi two-dimensional quantum gases in the crossover from bosonic \nmolecules to fermionic atoms.
Few-body physics has played a prominent role in atomic, molecular and nuclear physics since the early days of quantum mechanics. It is now possible-thanks to tremendous progress in cooling, trapping and manipulating ultracold samples-to experimentally study few-body phenomena in trapped atomic and molecular systems with unprecedented control. This review summarizes recent studies of few-body phenomena in trapped atomic and molecular gases, with an emphasis on small trapped systems. We start by introducing the free-space scattering properties and then investigate what happens when two particles, bosons or fermions, are placed in an external confinement. Next, various three-body systems are treated analytically in limiting cases. Our current understanding of larger two-component Fermi systems and Bose systems is reviewed, and connections with the corresponding bulk systems are established. Lastly, future prospects and challenges are discussed. Throughout this review, commonalities with other systems such as nuclei or quantum dots are highlighted.
In recent years, one-dimensional systems have attracted great interest in several fields of research, from condensed-matter physics to material science to chemistry, and more recently in the field of ultracold quantum gases. In our experiments, we produce one-dimensional chains of ultracold atomic gases by means of laser-light induced periodic potentials, modifying interactions in order to realize correlated states, and studying the effect of controlled disorder added on top of the periodic potential. We investigate the dynamical properties of the many-body correlated states with different techniques. In particular, we use inelastic light scattering to study the dynamical structure factor of the collective excitations, or particle-hole spectrum, and the momentum distribution of the system.